Sunday, March 31, 2013

3am

On a rare occasion when she was awake at three am, unable to decide whether to continue reading the novel or risk sleeping off only to wake up groggy for an early class, he crept into her mind. It was not him per se, having obliterated his existence from her life years ago with a determinedness that turned out to be self-perpetuating, but flashes of a period when it was impossible to categorize what they were, friends sounded inadequate and lovers petrifying.

She knew only what he wanted her to know. He remembered things she forgot she had told him. They had never ventured beyond apparently normal conversations and genial vibes. And eight springs ago, at 3am when the two insomniac quasi-friends had stumbled onto each other online, he suggested "Let's play a game". She snorted, but comforted that he couldn't have heard it asked politely "Trivia?" "Hmm. Let's talk like lovers. It'd be so funny", he quipped. She could sense the fake spontaneity and forced (and negligible) humour of the sentence the moment he wrote it.

They had met a year ago and after some unsuccessful and awkward flirting, he gave in to her offer of platonic boundaries. She was eighteen and socially inept, he was twenty-four and an effortless conversationalist. They were strangers whose only mode of communications were infrequent chats on Yahoo messenger and the single text message that he sent everyday that unknown to both had become as essential and routine and taken for granted as breathing. "I watched this movie last night. And I died." "Sending you one of my favourite songs about love. Strangers in the Night by Sinatra. You might have already heard it. But I don't care." "There's this book I read..." "I got a little drunk tonight and walking on the rail tracks with a few friends."

It was just clumsy sharing of everyday moments and occasional exchange of songs or stories that he thought she might like. She found his unpretentiousness charming. It was insomnia that bonded them over books, music, childhood memories, movies,
dreams and hopes, innumerable infatuations, significant individual
banks of embarrassing stories and also acted as outlets of ideas and
experiences they didn't share with their friends. They were each other's talking diaries.
At the end of the day, it felt good to talk to someone whose thoughts
were on a similar wavelength and with whom there was an undeniable
emotional connect. It almost felt illicit to contact each other during the day when they are supposed to be relatively occupied with college, exams, family and the real friends that crowded their lives and barely left any room for interaction.They dared to do so mostly on the pretext of small but relevant queries. An inconsequential text during the busy mornings carried the subtext I am thinking of you but it's awkward to say so, therefore sending a lame joke even though we both abhor them.

They cautiously skirted around the word 'love', it could only create complications. Yet there it was, out in the open, he had supposedly joked about talking like lovers; but the words had expanded abruptly in the two rooms separated by a thousand miles and flung them both against the walls.

In the cover of a mocking put-down and ':P' emoticon, she had fled. He too had retreated aware of crossing some invisible boundary. After two awkward months of dwindling conversations and nervousness, they could no longer ignore love. A good year followed. Then in the cover of a flimsy excuse, he had fled. She too had retreated unaware of the void that would show up unexpectedly seven years later, on a spring day at 3am.